He got up, unhooked the mooring rope and did what he could no longer do: he jumped down into the boat. Needless to say he fell over as the boat rocked. He banged his head on the gunwale, opening up a small cut. I thought about Oslovski lying dead on the floor of her garage next to her DeSoto.
Jansson reversed away from the jetty with blood dripping from his eyebrow. Perhaps he was in the first stages of dementia?
I didn’t even wait until he had rounded the headland before going up to the caravan. A little mouse scuttled out when I opened the door. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, how mice can get into a sealed room.
The phone rang just as I sat down with a cup of coffee. It was Lisa Modin; she asked about Oslovski straight away. I pictured her at her desk with her notepad in front of her.
‘How do you know about it?’ I asked.
‘I have people who keep me informed.’
‘Police officers?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Paramedics?’
‘Not so much.’
‘Undertakers?’
‘Occasionally.’
‘Is this where you say you are not at liberty to reveal your sources?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I was the one who found her.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
I explained how I had pushed open the garage door and found Oslovski lying on the concrete floor with a spanner in her hand. As I told Lisa my story it was as if I was only just beginning to grasp what had happened. The death that comes to others is every bit as incomprehensible as that which will one day come to me.
‘Was there anything suspicious about her death, as far as you could see?’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘The post-mortem will show natural causes — a stroke or a haemorrhage. It could be something else of course.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to wait for the post-mortem.’
‘Did she still have her glass eye?’
The question took me by surprise. Who had told Lisa about Oslovski’s eye? Had I mentioned it?
‘You told me about her when we were out on that island,’ she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked.
I vaguely remembered.
‘Yes, it was still there.’
Silence; perhaps she was making notes.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Drinking coffee.’
The conversation came to an end even though I would have liked it to continue.
After a few minutes the phone rang again; I hoped it was Lisa, but it was the churchwarden. He introduced himself as Lars Tyrén and he asked if I was happy to be one of the bearers for Nordin’s coffin. The funeral would take place at eleven o’clock on Friday morning; I promised to be there early in order to go over the ceremony in advance.
‘Isn’t he being cremated?’
‘He will be laid to rest in the family grave.’
I drank my coffee, thinking that I needed to go and buy a dark suit.
Lisa didn’t contact me again, and I didn’t call her either. I did, however, speak to Louise every day. There was a different tone between us now. We talked about Harriet each time we spoke; I also noticed that she was pushing me to get things sorted out with the insurance company so that I could make a start on the construction of the new house.
I went into town and bought a suit. I went into the most exclusive gentlemen’s outfitters I could find and chose black Armani. Because I didn’t know whether ties at the funeral were to be black or white, I bought one of each. Before I picked out a white shirt, I was assured that it wasn’t made in China, but in a factory in Turin.
The suit cost six thousand kronor. In spite of myself, I was pleased that I had allowed myself to splash out.
A strong north-easterly was blowing as the day of the funeral dawned. It had been an unusually windy autumn. Jansson’s boat bobbed and rocked in the squall. He was wearing a black tie with his suit.
Oslovski’s house was locked up when we picked up the car. Jansson gazed around curiously. He insisted on seeing where I had found Oslovski’s body, but the garage was locked too.
We drove to the church. I managed to put on my black tie, with the help of the rear-view mirror.
Nordin’s coffin was pale brown, with a bouquet of roses resting on the lid. The priest talked about Nordin as the eternal servant. His words made me feel sick; they sounded so false. Nordin had been a good person, but none of the residents of the archipelago had forgotten that he sometimes refused credit to those who were less well off. No doubt many people regarded him as a complete bastard.
We carried the coffin through the gusts of wind to the family grave in the western corner of the churchyard. The oldest inscription informed us that landowner Hjalmar Nordin had passed away on 12 March 1872.
As we lowered the coffin, I exchanged a glance with Jansson. I had the impression that he felt as if he were lowering his own coffin.
The ceremony was over. We walked over to the parish hall for coffee and sandwiches, but all I really wanted to do was run away. Suddenly the proximity of death frightened me.
It took me completely by surprise.
I hurried into the hall.
I took shelter inside the den.
Chapter 21
The first snow fell on the archipelago on 1 December. When I stepped out of the caravan, stark naked, to take my dip in the cold water, the ground was white. There wasn’t a puff of wind. Nature was holding her breath as autumn turned into winter. My bare feet left prints in the thin covering of snow. I climbed down the ladder, inhaled and counted to ten with my head under the water. The cold burned my skin. Back on the jetty, I was shivering so much my teeth were chattering. But I had no intention of giving up my dip, however cold it became or whatever thickness of ice I had to chop my way through.
I hurried back to the caravan and made my breakfast. On this particular morning I put on one of the blue Chinese shirts; the collar had already started to fray. I looked at my face in the shaving mirror: it was pale, my eyes increasingly sunken. My hair was thinner, the hairline receding. I had a sore that refused to heal at the left-hand corner of my mouth. It could be an ingrowing wart. As I stared into my eyes, I saw a person I only partly recognised.
A duel was going on between the man in the mirror and the man standing on the floor of the caravan.
Time had passed, and time continued to pass. It was already several weeks since the trip to Paris, Oslovski’s death and Nordin’s funeral. Veronika, who keeps herself well informed about what is going on in the archipelago, told me that Oslovski’s post-mortem had confirmed my suspicions: she had suffered a massive stroke and died in seconds. The PM had also revealed that her body was riddled with cancer, with the primary tumour in one of her adrenal glands.
No one had been able to track down any relatives. I went to her funeral. She had left instructions stating that she wanted to be cremated. The church was sparsely populated. I couldn’t understand why Jansson wasn’t there; his absence upset me. His curiosity at least should have brought him there.
I occasionally spoke to Lisa Modin on the phone. Every time our conversation ended I wanted it to continue. She would often call back the following day, and I began to realise that in spite of everything she had the same need to talk to someone as I did.
Jansson had followed my advice and taken himself off to the clinic, where an ECG had revealed exactly what I had suspected: signs of a disturbance in the cardiac conduction system. He was now on medication and no longer had any symptoms. However, I noticed that he was constantly expecting the problem to recur. Every time he turned up I listened to his heart. When I assured him that it sounded perfectly normal, he didn’t believe me.